“Oh, fear the Lord, ye his saints; for there is no want to them that fear Him.”

The group of banished little ones was recalled, but while the messenger was gone for them, the mother in the strength of her new-found peace, had brought forth from that closed chamber the gifts which the fond father had designed for each of his children, and had spread them out in fair array on the parlor table.  So it was New Year’s Day to the children after all.

The trust of that mother in the widow’s God was never put to shame.  Her children grew up around her, and hardly realized that they had not father and mother both in the one parent who was all in all to them.  She was efficient and successful in all her undertakings.  Her home, with its overshadowing trees, its rural abundance and hearty hospitalities, lives in the hearts of many as their brightest embodiment of an ideal, a cheerful, Christian home.  The memory of that mother, dispensing little kindnesses to everybody within her reach, is a heritage to her children worth thousands of gold and silver.  Truly, “they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.”

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FILIAL REVERENCE OF THE TURKS.

A beautiful feature in the character of the Turks is, their reverence and respect for the author of their being.  Their friends’ advice and reprimands are unheeded; their words are leash—­nothing; but their mother is an oracle.  She is consulted, confided in, listened to with respect and deference, honored to her latest hour, and remembered with affection and regret beyond the grave.

“My wife dies, and I replace her; my children perish, and others may be born to me; but who shall restore to me the mother who has passed away, and who is no more?”

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Original.

THE MOTHERS OF THE BIBLE.

ICHABOD’S MOTHER.

                         “Strength is born
  In the deep silence of long-suffering hearts,
  Not amidst joy.”

The noblest characters the world knows are those who have been trained in the school of affliction.  They only who walk in the fiery furnace are counted worthy the companionship of the Son of God.  The modes of their discipline are various as are their circumstances and peculiar traits, but in one form or other stern trials have proved them all.  They partake of the holiness of the Lord, because they have first endured the chastening of his love.  They are filled with righteousness, because they have known the pangs of spiritual hunger and the extremity of thirst.  They abound, because they have been empty.  They are heavenly-minded, because they have first learned in the bitterness of their spirits how unsatisfying is earth.  They are firmly anchored by faith, because frequent tempests and threatened shipwreck have taught them their need.  The Master himself was made perfect through suffering, and with his baptism, must they who would follow him closely, be baptized.